It's 20XX and world stability is in danger. The US
President Barak Orama travels to East Fulton to attend a summit at the UN, but
is kidnapped during his speech.

A mysterious group, the Ninja Dragon Terrorist organization takes responsibility
for the kidnapping, demanding $1 trillion for the safe return of the president.

The corrupt billionaire mayor of East Fulton, Mike
Moneybags, won't let the police investigate unless the federal government pays
the city billions of dollars in relief.

The dutiful chief of police, Antonio Santiago, calls his
daughter and two friends to investigate in his stead. He needs to find out what
is going on, although in the back of his mind, something about all of this just
isn't right...

Welcome to Treachery in Beatdown City, a beat ‘em up game
like no other.

Designed by super mega fans of brawlers: We LOVE brawlers. We grew up playing the classics: Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Guardian Heroes, The Punisher, Aliens Vs. Predator, etc. When setting out to create a new game in the genre we wanted to take the things we loved, and build on that. Also, we noticed when studying the greats that there are problems too, like brain dead enemies, overpowered moves, and gameplay that tends to favor dominant strategies that break the "fun".

We're here to reinvent the way you play a side
scrolling beat ‘em up because we want to grow the genre!

Tactical Brawling: Use real time movement to walk around the
arena, and even use some real time attacks to break open a few garbage cans or mailboxes for health or other items. When it comes to
attacking, your COMBO menu becomes your best tool.

Using a combination of Fight Points (FP) and combo meter, players of all skill
types can choose up to 3 moves out of dozens of moves that will be learned over the course of the adventure to create any number of unique combinations of attacks.

Combine strikes with grapples, or do multiple grapple moves
in a row. It's your choice!

Over 26 unique enemies and growing! : Enemies look
different, walk differently and all have their own unique ways of attacking. The
only repetition in attacks is that there are only so many ways that a person
can throw a punch. Enemies range from fast and agile to slow, lumbering and
extremely powerful. Some will charge you, others will play keep away.

Plus many more to come!

Enemies are broken down into class types.

Grunts have regular attacks, but also usually have 1 or 2 hidden super strong attacks.

Sneaky enemies focus on lowering offensive options for players.

Grapplers focus on throwing the player.

Support characters taunt and cheer in the fight to cast buffs on your foes and give them an advantage.

Giants have super strong offense, but are often on the slower side.

These class types make fighting mixed groups of enemies a real challenge. And enemies can take on sub classes, so there can be a Giant Support with enormous amounts of HP and high evade or a grappler grunt who has strong strikes as well as strong grapples!

The possibilities are endless!

Learn a large array of new moves as the game goes on! –
Moves aren’t in just for the sake of adding moves, as every attack, defensive maneuver
and combo is tested and included only if it adds to the fighting mechanics in a
positive way.

Experimentation & creativity are key elements to the experience whereas execution is not.

In Progress Over world map

Top down overworld exploration gameplay: Choose your paths
through East Fulton, looking for hidden items to heal or power up your player and
encounter hidden boss fights that teach your fighters even more moves!

Plus, heal your player, seek out shortcuts through densely populated areas and find files on every enemy in the game. Read those to find out enemy weaknesses and their personal stories.

Super special attacks! : It wouldn’t be a beat ‘em up
without a super bar that fills up and allows players to turn the tide in
battle. Some of these moves can even be chained from regular attacks!

A dark humor story played out in classic frame by frame
cutscenes : Engage with enemies, find out the personalities behind the heroes
and enemies and perhaps gain empathy for them… before having to lay a beatdown on
them.

Teaser trailer from 2013, featuring a brief story introduction.

Switch characters strategically!: Each of the player
characters has his or her strengths and weaknesses against every enemy in the
game. Switching can be done on the overworld with the press of a button, and strategic use of each characters strengths can make a fight that would usually be very difficult much easier.

Damage taken in between fights is cumulative, so make
sure to switch, or heal your character before their next fight!

The cover!

Health items found by breaking objects

Enemy bios

Ninja Dragon Terrorist concept art

Example attack

From concept sketch to finished pixel art

The cast

Electric Spin Kick

Bruce Maxwell is a wealthy stockbroker with an affinity for Asian languages and culture, without forgetting his Jamaican roots. Bruce is the lightweight character, fighting with a mix of Jeet Kune Do and Capoeira filled with lighting fast punches and acrobatic kicks.

Burning Lariat

Brad "The Bull Killer" Steele is a former professional wrestler, born in Texas from a Spanish-Mexican family. Brad runs a community center in the SoNo section of East Fulton to help people in need. Brad is the heavyweight character fighting with high powered wrestling throws and heavy strikes.

Icy Spin Lobs

Lisa Santiago is enrolled in the police academy and has an eye for forensic science. She focuses on boxing and mma, with a mix of holds and brutal kicks/punches.

These are just a few tracks from the very beginning of the game, all made by the amazing INVERSEPHASE!

We started this project conceptually as a way to create something new and
inventive while working other jobs in the AAA games industry back in
2009. Since then the amount of effort put in has grown significantly when we
figured out that this was something people actually would want to play, and
2013 was the first full year that we were able to work on Treachery in Beatdown
City in full time mode.

We spent most of that year building the core fighting system,
but any good fighting system is built with tweaks to balance, as well as additions to the system. We have also gathered
a lot of playtesting feedback from a large amount of people from a number of
shows like PAX, Indiecade, GDC, E3 and the world’s largest international
fighting game tournament, EVO.

Our current progress is that we are almost done with the first level which takes a few hours to beat (longer than most full length brawlers!). The level features numerous songs, over 26
completely unique enemies and dozens of player attacks. We plan to add 5 more
levels that will add at least another 20 enemies, a couple of dozen more
attacks as well as more exotic locations and music to go along with them that
we can't quite reveal yet.

Beyond adding content we will also be porting the game to
Unity out of the Playstation Mobile framework and that, while similar, is a very different environment that will no doubt speed up our development, but will require moving over and changing the code as necessary.

Treachery in Beatdown City is all about creating a tactical
brawler with fighting game elements, so of course we need the community to give
us feedback on how best to tweak for balance. Every single backer will be able to play the game early, while those who want to get in extra early can pledge to gain even
earlier access to in production levels to help us build the best fights
possible.

The only way we’ll be able to launch in early 2015 is with
your help.

Budget breakdown

We have already invested quite a lot of our own funds into this game, and have already paid for some of the events/talks that we will be attending this year to support Treachery in Beatdown City - the next one being GDC in March.

Besides that, Manny and I are working on the game full time, and need support to cover bare minimum living expenses for the next year.

Shawn will be creating the individually drawn art for 5 or more new levels, (which don't all take place in the city, and will even end up in areas like a desert) as well as close to 30 + new enemies, complete with new animations and profile pictures, as well as writing all of the dialog and all of the other things that will need to be taken care of.

Manny will be doing all of the coding, creating all of the new enemy behavior patterns and setting up all of the new enemy battle systems and encounters.

Between the two of them they will also be the primary QA people, with a few friends helping out with primary bug fixes and taking all of your data to tweak the game.

We will also be paying Inverse Phase for all of the remaining music that he will create.

And this is not counting Diana who donates a lot of her spare time to consult on and create all of the production art assets that you see, and other industry friends who will be helping out with copy editing on the writing.

This is all keeping in mind that Kickstarter & Amazon payments takes their fees, and reward fulfillment fees as well.

Even though we are working to get the game done by around February of next year, we will still need to work past that to give you, and everyone else, post launch support, as well.

We have new shirt ideas!

Vote on a 2nd shirt option!

Check out the near finished art for the RAD ENOUGH tier t-shirt

ARE YOU RAD ENOUGH TO WEAR THIS SHIRT?

Shirt detailing - High Res drawing

Want to be on a poster? Pick up POST NO BILLS and make that happen

Want your own personal graffiti, sketched in high resolution as well as put in the game? Pick up PAINT THE TOWN

Graffiti concept sketch

In game graffiti

Rad Guys graffiti

Want us to draw you, or a character you created in gorgeous pixelly goodness in a variety of stances/pixel sizes? Pick up PIXEL PORTRAIT

THIS COULD BE YOU

Would you like to help design some of the mysterious Ninja Dragon Terrorist group? Or even make a character you created into one? Pick up DESIGNER OF TERROR

Want an exclusive piece of art created just for you of a character from the game? Pick up FINE ART OF FIGHTING

Do you want to be in the game, as a super cool alt character, AND get yourself drawn in a variety of poses, AND have your own personal bio/cutscene interaction? Pick up ULTIMATE COUNTER

Shawn Alexander Allen (@anuchallenger) is the game designer, director,
animator, artist, and founder of Nuchallenger. Before creating Treachery in Beatdown City Shawn worked for 4.5 years at Rockstar games where he worked on a variety of tasks, such as creating trailers, short films, cutscene cameras, writing/performing character dialog &
game analysis on numerous titles spanning GTA IV, Ballad of Gay Tony/Lost and
Damned, Red Dead Redemption, LA Noire, Max Payne 3 & the preliminary stages
of the GTA V marketing campaign.

Shawn began doing in depth analysis of fighting in games years ago both for work and on his own time, and it became more and more evident that the only thing to satiate that would be to build his own unique brawler.

Manny A. Marcano (@cavaliergames) is the coder and co-designer on Treachery in Beatdown City, having initially built a prototype with
Shawn in Gamemaker to make sure they both weren't out of their minds creating a turn based beat 'em up.

Manny grew up playing all manner of RPGs, beating complex games at the age of 4. He takes pride in building the stats that drive Treachery in Beatdown Cities unique battles.

Before working on Treachery in Beatdown City Manny worked
at Take Two and Rockstar Games on The Darkness, Bioshock & Max
Payne 3 in a number of roles.

Diana Santiago (@deeluxdi) designed Lisa, the female protagonist, makes all of the beautiful non-digital art assets for the game and serves as the producer. She also created those lenticular business cards that Shawn carries around, in case you've ever seen them.

She has her Masters in Fine Art and she is also a performance artist and co-creator of the web series Supertight. She had been married to Shawn for just 6 months before development of Treachery in Beatdown City became a full time thing, when the prototype was in full swing.

Diana was working part time while Shawn worked in AAA, but took on a full time job to keep the family afloat during development.

Inverse Phase (@inversephase) is the composer for all of the music. Previously he had music on a number of
soundtracks including the Super Meatboy OST. Besides working with Shawn to
develop the musical tone of Treachery in Beatdown City he also launched a Trent
Reznor approved Nine Inch Nails cover CD called Pretty Eight Machine, after
having a successful kickstarter to raise funds for it.

Over the year he has played excerpts from the Treachery in
Beatdown City soundtrack at events like Magfest that got the crowd going wild.

If you would like to hear more from Shawn, he was on Destructoid's Sup Holmes late in 2013 and you can check out the interview below! Find out how he ended up being attacked at his Gamestop job a week before working at Rockstar games!

In order to add-on to your pledge, you can go and manage your pledge and just add the amount for any extras you want to pick up. You do not need to change your reward tier, so all Early Birds get the cheaper copy of the game.

For an extra copy of the game, add $11 ->this is a kickstarter only discount

To add on the shirt to any tier, add $22

To add the physical soundtrack CD, add $13

Stretch Goals!

THANKS!

Risks and challenges

Game development is an often crazy event filled with technical difficulties, playtesting, bug testing, and numerous other things that can drive a project off rails and delay it substantially.

Shawn has worked on numerous projects on the AAA game level that were delayed at the last minute, as well as smaller projects that shipped on time, so the experience with shipping video games, both large and small, is nothing new.

At the same time Shawn, Diana and Manny have a lot of their own money in the project already, and have spent a lot of time on preproduction to make sure that game development can go as smoothly as possible.

Yes and yes. Steam Greenlight has seemingly amended their terms so games that are almost finished are the only ones that can be put on the service, which puts us in a bind. We have to wait until our development is closer to complete in order to even get the game on Greenlight, but I am confident that we will make it one way or another.

This campaign is for the PC/MAC release of the full story of Treachery in Beatdown City and will include all of the great backer rewards, lots of enemies, several stages, and whatever balance tweaks that are made over the course of the year of development.

However -

Treachery in Beatdown City Episode 1 is still scheduled to ship on Playstation Mobile, which will run on Vitas as well as other Playstation Mobile certified devices, and has been feature locked for some time. It will include the 26 characters we have created, as well as the first level of the game and is set to be an introduction to the world of East Fulton. It will not include anything extra from this campaign.

There are stats that drive everything, but there are no skill trees. Lisa, Bruce, and Brad are all set in stone. They will learn all of the same moves every time you play the game. That is, aside from hidden moves that can only be learned by fighting their rivals spread throughout the world.

Skill trees are good, of course, but the three playable characters will be unique enough that switching between them should be suitable.

I'll also add leveling will be automatic, and not experience based. This is to avoid making players feel like they have to fight everyone on each map.

Players move around each fight screen with full real time movement. In fact sometimes you will end up in a scrolling fight where you fight multiple enemies.

The games biggest hook is the menu based combat. But there is also a quick attack that can be used strategically as well.

Menu based attacks take FP & Combo meter to execute, and the player can pick whichever moves they have the amount of FP to use. This is always a constant.

Quick attacks are locked to a specific combo, which is achieved by tapping a button outside of the menu. These are ideal for breaking objects in the environment as they do not take any resource to do so.

Quick attacks do however take some combo meter if you hit the enemy. They also are much more prone to miss, and the combo meter used for quick attacks takes longer to refill.

Players shouldn't rely on Quick Attacks as their primary offense, but in a jam, you might want to just jam out a quick combo to see if you can beat an enemy who is bearing down on you!

Rewards

You selected

Pledge $10 or more

99 backers
All gone!

EARLY BIRD - BRAWLER! - Receive a digital copy of Treachery in Beatdown City for PC/MAC (if we get listed on Steam you will get that key too!)+ access to the game before the general public close to release and access to backer forums to help vote on ideas at an early bird price!

Your name will be listed as an EARLY BRAWLER backer in the credits.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $15 or more

131 backers

BRAWLER! -- Receive a digital copy of Treachery in Beatdown City for PC/MAC (if we get listed on Steam you will get that key too!) + access to the game before the general public close to release and access to backer forums to help vote on ideas!

Your name will be listed as a BRAWLER backer in the credits.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $20 or more

99 backers
Limited (1 left of 100)

EARLY FRESH BEATS ---
Receive a digital copy of the full soundtrack to Treachery in Beatdown City when it releases.

+ Receive everything in the EARLY BIRD BRAWLER tier (And immediately receive the already released Treachery in Beatdown City EP when the campaign closes)

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $22 or more

12 backers
Limited (88 left of 100)

DOUBLE BRAWLER - It's a BRAWLER bundle! Get 2 digital copies of Treachery in Beatdown City at a Kickstarter only price + the other perks of being a BRAWLER!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $25 or more

24 backers

FRESH BEATS

Receive a digital copy of the full soundtrack to Treachery in Beatdown City when it releases + Receive everything in the BRAWLER tier (And immediately receive the already released Treachery in Beatdown City EP when the campaign closes)

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $30 or more

22 backers

FIGHTERS' MANUAL

Receive a digital manual filled with art, back stories, strategies and tips about the game.

+ Receive everything in the FRESH BEATS tier.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $35 or more

2 backers

WEAPONIZER - Receive exclusive early access to bonus weapons - The Steel Chair, Brass Knuckles, Nunchucks, and get to vote on 3 more! These will appear in your inventory to use in fights, and also show up in breakable objects. Also includes FIGHTER'S MANUAL tier.

Also choose to be labeled as a WEAPONIZER in the game's credits.

All tiers above $35 will receive this reward, too!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $40 or more

13 backers

DEDICATED FIGHTER - Receive access to the earliest, unfinished builds to help with active development of the game. + Receive everything in the FRESH BEATS tier. Your name will be listed under Dedicated Fighter or Brawler in the credits, you decide!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $45 or more

1 backer

EXTRA DEDICATED FIGHTER ON top of DEDICATED FIGHTER tier, receive a PRINTED manual filled with art, back stories, strategies and tips about the game.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

Ships anywhere in the world

You selected

Pledge $50 or more

20 backers

FIGHTING ARTIST - Receive a lovingly laid out digital art book featuring watercolor, ink, pencil and digital art from the game as well as an in depth strategy guide detailing enemy stats, bios, and tips you won't find in the manual!

+Receive everything in the DEDICATED FIGHTER tier.

Your name will be listed under Fighting Artist, Dedicated Fighter or Brawler, you decide!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $60 or more

1 backer

DECKED OUT - Receive exclusive early access to bonus costumes. 3 per character: 2 shown here plus get to help design/vote on the last 1 per character!

+ Receive everything in the DEDICATED FIGHTER TIER

All tiers above $65 will receive this reward, too!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $72 or more

12 backers

RAD ENOUGH - Are you rad enough to show your solidarity with the citizens of East Fulton to wear this T - SHIRT?

+Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier.

Your name will be listed in the credits under RAD ENOUGH, Fighting Artist, Dedicated Fighter, or Brawler, you decide!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

Ships anywhere in the world

You selected

Pledge $85 or more

9 backers

PHYSICALITY - On top of showing your solidarity for the cause, receive a nice physical copy of the soundtrack.

+ Receive everything in the RAD ENOUGH tier. Later tiers do not automatically include these items.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

Ships anywhere in the world

You selected

Pledge $109 or more

4 backers

EXTRA PHYSICALITY - Receive a lovingly laid out PRINTED art book featuring watercolor, ink, pencil and digital art from the game as well as an in depth strategy guide detailing enemy stats, bios, and tips you won't find in the manual! +Receive everything in the PHYSICALITY tier. Your name will be listed under Fighting Artist, Dedicated Fighter or Brawler, you decide!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

Ships anywhere in the world

You selected

Pledge $149 or more

5 backers
All gone!

POST NO BILLS

Get a picture of yourself, a character you created or just your name immortalized on a poster in the background of a fight stage. Warning, 8 bit stylization can be tricky for intricate ideas.

Character must be your own design and we reserve the right to reject any concepts, but we'll work with you to make it fit.

+ Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier.

Shirt + Physical Soundtrack not included. Please see add-ons section.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $159 or more

4 backers
Limited (1 left of 5)

SERIOUSLY, POST NO BILLS II

Get a picture of yourself, a character you created or just your name immortalized on a poster in the background of a fight stage. Warning, 8 bit stylization can be tricky for intricate ideas. Character must be your own design and we reserve the right to reject any concepts, but we'll work with you to make it fit. + Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier.

Shirt + Physical Soundtrack not included. Please see add-ons section.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $199 or more

2 backers

PAINT THE TOWN - We will make some graffiti using your name, avatar or whatever you want us to or submit your own graffiti design to be pixelated and put in the game (must be your own creation). We reserve the right to reject any concepts, but will work with you to make sure you are happy.

Does not include POST NO BILLS tier.

+ Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier.

Shirt + Physical Soundtrack not included. Please see add-ons section.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $299 or more

3 backers

PIXEL PORTRAIT

Have your likeness or that of a character you created immortalized in Treachery in Beatdown City style! Receive a digital sprite sheet that includes a detailed portrait, a smaller version of the portrait, as well as regular fighter style character complete with walk cycle and a couple of attacks!

+ Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier.

Does not include POST NO BILLS or PAINT THE TOWN tier.

Shirt + Physical Soundtrack not included. Please see add-ons section.

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $375 or more

0 backers
Limited (5 left of 5)

FINE ART OF FIGHTING - Receive a physical water color and ink drawing of any enemy, signed by the artist Diana Santiago!

Also receive a digital scan of the file.

+ Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier!

Does not Include Designer of Terror

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

Ships anywhere in the world

You selected

Pledge $375 or more

0 backers
Limited (5 left of 5)

Designer of Terror - Help us design 1 of the Ninja Dragon Terrorist enemies! This group is so mysterious that very few people have ever seen any of them and lived.

They are known for their cross cultural garbs, and you can help design one with the team. Choose their color palette/accessories, fighting style and more!

We reserve the right to reject any concepts, but we will work with you over skype one on one to make sure everyone is happy.

+ Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $500 or more

0 backers
Limited (3 left of 3)

VAIN FIGHTER - Receive a physical water color and ink drawing of yourself done in Treachery in Beatdown City style (in an action pose if you want!) - signed by the artist Diana Santiago!

Also receive a digital scan of the file.

And you will have your name in the credits apart from other backer credits in a special thank you section.

+ Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier!

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $1,000 or more

2 backers
Limited (8 left of 10)

ULTIMATE COUNTER
Have your likeness placed as an enemy on the streets of East Fulton! You will be an alternate to one of the regular enemies but with increased stats.

You will receive everything in PIXEL PORTRAIT tier (sprite sheet, etc.) + you will have a bio in the game, as well as a cutscene featuring your character that you will get to help write!

Also receive ULTIMATE COUNTER backer credit and a special thank you.

+ Receive everything in the PIXEL PORTRAIT TIER

Estimated delivery:Feb 2015

You selected

Pledge $2,000 or more

0 backers

BEATDOWN TOUR Come to New York City (flight and living arrangements not included) and have a tour with the team of New York from their unique perspective. We'll even buy you lunch at one of our favorite places, Katz' deli!

These tours will begin after the game is done.

Also receive BEATDOWN TOURIST credit and a special thank you.

+ Receive everything in the FIGHTING ARTIST tier!

Estimated delivery:Mar 2015

Funding period

Feb 13, 2014 - Mar 15, 2014
(30 days)

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